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And towards the Intellectual-Principle what is our relation?
By this I mean, not that faculty in the soul which is one of the
emanations from the Intellectual-Principle, but The
Intellectual-Principle itself [Divine-Mind].
This also we possess as the summit of our being. And we have It
either as common to all or as our own immediate possession: or
again we may possess It in both degrees, that is in common, since
It is indivisible- one, everywhere and always Its entire self-
and severally in that each personality possesses It entire in the
First-Soul [i.e. in the Intellectual as distinguished from the
lower phase of the Soul].
Hence we possess the Ideal-Forms also after two modes: in the
Soul, as it were unrolled and separate; in the
Intellectual-Principle, concentrated, one.
And how do we possess the Divinity?
In that the Divinity is contained in the Intellectual-Principle
and Authentic-Existence; and We come third in order after these
two, for the We is constituted by a union of the supreme, the
undivided Soul- we read- and that Soul which is divided among
[living] bodies. For, note, we inevitably think of the Soul,
though one undivided in the All, as being present to bodies in
division: in so far as any bodies are Animates, the Soul has
given itself to each of the separate material masses; or rather
it appears to be present in the bodies by the fact that it shines
into them: it makes them living beings not by merging into body
but by giving forth, without any change in itself, images or
likenesses of itself like one face caught by many mirrors.
The first of these images is Sense-Perception seated in the
Couplement; and from this downwards all the successive images are
to be recognized as phases of the Soul in lessening succession
from one another, until the series ends in the faculties of
generation and growth and of all production of offspring-
offspring efficient in its turn, in contradistinction to the
engendering Soul which [has no direct action within matter but]
produces by mere inclination towards what it fashions.
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